[1]
Feel the Web: Towards the Design of Haptic Screen Interfaces for Accessible
Web Browsing
Poster Session 2
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Ashok, Vikas
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Seventeenth International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and
Accessibility
2015-10-26
p.391-392
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Web browsing with screen readers is tedious and frustrating, largely due to
the inability of blind screen-reader users to get spatial information about the
structure of web pages and utilize it for effective navigation. Haptic
interfaces have the potential to provide blind users with a tactile 'feel' for
the 2-D layout of web pages and help them focus screen reading on specific
parts of the webpage. In this preliminary work, we explore the utility of a
simple haptic web-browsing interface -- tactile overlays, and report on a
preliminary user study with 10 blind participants who performed various
web-browsing tasks with and without these overlays. We also analyzed the
user-interaction behavior and explored the appropriate design choices and their
tradeoffs in the space of haptic-interface design for accessible web browsing.
[2]
Complexities of practical web automation
Transcoding and automation
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2015 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2015-05-18
p.11
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Web automation, a process of automating browsing actions on behalf of the
user, has the potential to bridge the divide between the ways visually-impaired
and sighted people access the Web. The proliferation of portable small-screen
devices (smartphones, smart watches, etc.) presents both an opportunity and a
challenge for the development of a new generation of automated non-visual user
interfaces for sighted users. The goal of this paper is to provide guidance for
the designers of future user interface automation systems. In this paper, we
systematize and analyze the complexities involved in building a practical,
usable, and accessible system for web automation. We review the published
literature and present lessons learned from the authors' own years of
experience in developing novel approaches to web automation for
visually-impaired Web users.
[3]
Look Ma, no ARIA: generic accessible interfaces for web widgets
Adaptation
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Ashok, Vikas
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2015 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2015-05-18
p.21
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: Once simple and static, many web pages have now evolved into complex web
applications. Hundreds of web development libraries provide ready-to-use custom
widgets, which can be further customized to fit the needs of individual web
applications. Web developers are supposed to use ARIA specifications to make
widgets accessible to screen readers; however, ARIA markup is often used
incorrectly and inconsistently, and sometimes even missing in webpages
altogether. Given a wide selection of widgets and a lack of proper ARIA
support, accessing content of custom widgets in web pages with screen readers
has been a challenge for blind users. As a result, blind users cannot benefit
from the convenience of using these widgets or, even worse, get stuck on
inaccessible content. In our previous work, we showed that custom dynamic
widgets could be automatically detected and classified as soon as they appear
in web pages. In this paper, we propose to make such widgets accessible by
providing generic interfaces for widgets of a particular class. We show how
this can be accomplished on the example of Web Chat widget. To demonstrate the
usability of the resulting chat interface, we report on the results of a user
study with 18 blind screen-reader users.
[4]
Capti-speak: a speech-enabled web screen reader
End-user tools
/
Ashok, Vikas
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2015 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2015-05-18
p.22
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: People with vision impairments interact with web pages via screen readers
that provide keyboard shortcuts for navigating through the content. However,
web browsing with screen readers can be a frustrating experience mainly due to
time and effort spent on locating the desired content through the extensive use
of keyboard shortcuts. This gets even worse if users have limited shortcut
vocabulary or are not familiar with the structure of a particular webpage.
Augmenting screen readers with a speech input interface has the potential to
alleviate the above limitations.
This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of
Capti-Speak, a speech-enabled screen reader for web browsing, capable of
translating speech utterances into browsing actions, executing the actions, and
providing audio feedback. The novelty of Capti-Speak is that it leverages a
custom dialog model, designed exclusively for non-visual web access, for
interpreting speech utterances. A user study with 20 blind subjects showed that
Capti-Speak was significantly more usable and efficient compared to the regular
screen reader, especially for ad-hoc browsing, searching, and navigating to the
content of interest.
[5]
Affordable web accessibility: a case for cheaper ARIA
Standards and best practices
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2015 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2015-05-18
p.32
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: When a commercial entity designs a product, one of the major considerations
is the cost of production. No matter how amazing a product idea is, how many
features the product has, or how noble the cause is, most products will fail if
they are too expensive for the target market or too expensive to compete in the
market. Any website is, of course, a product; and web accessibility is often
perceived as an added feature that costs extra money to develop. In this paper,
we make an argument that the greatest weakness of WAI-ARIA, an accessibility
specification for web developers, is the cost of its implementation. We argue
that this cost, rather than specific technical constraints, may be the main
culprit of the poor accessibility of many websites, except for the most popular
ones, and of the slow progress in WAI-ARIA support in screen readers. We
contend that the accessibility of the Web could be greatly improved if an
affordable version of WAI-ARIA were to emerge. This can be achieved by: (a)
extending the specification to increase its utility for a wider range of
potential users, which will allow for economies of scale, and (b) refining the
specification to make it both more cost effective for web development and more
open to innovation in user-agent development. In this paper, we discuss
accessible web development in the context of cost and identify potential areas
of improvement.
[6]
Wizard-of-Oz evaluation of speech-driven web browsing interface for people
with vision impairments
Evaluations and users
/
Ashok, Vikas
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Stoyanchev, Svetlana
/
Puzis, Yuri
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2014 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2014-04-07
p.12
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: People with visual impairments typically interact with the Web using screen
readers that perform serial text-to-speech narration of the content. Although
they rely on keyboard shortcuts to navigate through the content quickly,
browsing fatigue caused by too many keyboard presses and clicks, increased
cognitive load caused by having to remember many shortcuts, and information
overload from having to listen to irrelevant content, are all too common.
Speech-based interaction modality has the potential to address these
shortcomings by allowing users to engage in a dialog with an intelligent agent
capable of translating user commands/requests to system actions and generating
appropriate responses to them.
This paper presents empirical findings of a Wizard-of-Oz user study
conducted with 24 blind subjects to provide a baseline for gauging the
usability and effectiveness of speech interfaces for non-visual web access.
Specifically, study participants were required to complete a set of typical web
browsing tasks using unrestricted speech commands ranging from simple commands
such as "click the search button", to complex commands such as "buy this
product". Unknown to the participants, these commands were executed by the
wizard and appropriate responses were generated with the help of a screen
reader. An important byproduct emerging from the study is a new dialog corpus
for non-visual web access that will provide pivotal reference data for
exploring the design space underlying the development of high performance
dialog systems for web accessibility.
[7]
Predictive, accessible web automation: a longitudinal study
Web browsing and personalization
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2014 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2014-04-07
p.21
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: The problem of efficient, usable non-visual web access remains inadequately
solved, despite its critical importance to a significant number of
visually-impaired existing and potential Web users. Web automation, a process
of automating browsing actions on behalf of the user, has the potential to
significantly improve the usability and accessibility of non-visual web
browsing. Automation Assistant is an accessible web automation system designed
specifically for this purpose. Until now, however, Automation Assistant was
only evaluated in a short-term, controlled experiment. In this paper we report
preliminary results on a longitudinal study designed to explore the long term
practicality of the approach to accessible web automation taken by Automation
Assistant. The study involves a single participant and can be considered a
pilot of a future experiment involving a large number of participants and
benefiting from the lessons learned during the pilot.
[8]
Listen to everything you want to read with Capti narrator
The Paciello group accessibility challenge
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Puzis, Yuri
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Bouker, James
/
Feng, Bo
/
Sicoli, Richard
/
Melnyk, Andrii
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Ashok, Vikas
/
Dausch, Glenn
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2014 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2014-04-07
p.33
© Copyright 2014 ACM
Summary: Capti Narrator is a new cross-platform application for convenient,
hands-free consumption of digital content, enabling users to listen to news,
blogs, documents, unprotected e-books, and more while commuting, cooking,
working out, anywhere, anytime. Capti will improve the productivity of
students, busy professionals, language learners, people with print
disabilities, and anyone else who wants to listen to content instead of reading
it from the screen.
[9]
Predictive web automation assistant for people with vision impairments
Research papers
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Puzis, Rami
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on the World Wide Web
2013-05-13
v.1
p.1031-1040
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: The Web is far less usable and accessible for people with vision impairments
than it is for sighted people. Web automation, a process of automating browsing
actions on behalf of the user, has the potential to bridge the divide between
the ways sighted and people with vision impairment access the Web;
specifically, it can enable the latter to breeze through web browsing tasks
that beforehand were slow, hard, or even impossible to accomplish. Typical web
automation requires that the user record a macro, a sequence of browsing steps,
so that these steps can be automated in the future by replaying the macro.
However, for people with vision impairment, automation with macros is not
usable.
In this paper, we propose a novel model-based approach that facilitates web
automation without having to either record or replay macros. Using the past
browsing history and the current web page as the browsing context, the proposed
model can predict the most probable browsing actions that the user can do. The
model construction is "unsupervised". More importantly, the model is
continuously and incrementally updated as history evolves, thereby, ensuring
the predictions are not "outdated".
We also describe a novel interface that lets the user focus on the objects
associated with the most probable predicted browsing steps (e.g., clicking
links and filling out forms), and facilitates automatic execution of the
selected steps. A study with 19 blind participants showed that the proposed
approach dramatically reduced the interaction time needed to accomplish typical
browsing tasks, and the user interface was perceived to be much more usable
than the standard screen-reading interfaces.
[10]
Non-visual skimming on touch-screen devices
Tactile and touch
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Intelligent User
Interfaces
2013-03-19
v.1
p.435-444
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: While reading on touch-screens, sighted users can quickly pan through
content, skim it, and pick out bits and pieces of information before deciding
to read it more carefully. In contrast, blind users have to rely on the screen
reader to narrate the content to them. To go through the text quickly, blind
users employ gestures that direct the screen reader to skip to the next line or
the next paragraph. However, the serial audio interface of the screen reader
makes it difficult for blind users to get a sense of what is important before
listening to, at least, a part of the content. This makes ad hoc skimming with
gestures slow and ineffective. We address this problem in this paper;
specifically we propose a non-visual skimming interface that enables blind
users to control the amount of content with simple pinch-in and pinch-out
gestures. This interface simulates the skimming experience enjoyed by sighted
people, and enables blind users to listen to the gist of content, while
controlling the speed of information intake. We report on a user study
demonstrating that the proposed interface significantly outperforms ad hoc
skimming techniques employed by blind users. Our results suggest that the
proposed approach holds promise in empowering blind users to access digitized
information much faster.
[11]
Thematic organization of web content for distraction-free text-to-speech
narration
Screen reader usage
/
Islam, Muhammad Asiful
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Fourteenth Annual ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Assistive Technologies
2012-10-22
p.17-24
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: People with visual disabilities, especially those who are blind, have
digital content narrated to them by text-to-speech (TTS) engines (e.g., with
the help of screen readers). Naively narrating web pages, particularly the ones
consisting of several diverse pieces (e.g., news summaries, opinion pieces,
taxonomy, ads), with TTS engines without organizing them into thematic segments
will make it very difficult for the blind user to mentally separate out and
comprehend the essential elements in a segment, and the effort to do so can
cause significant cognitive stress. One can alleviate this difficulty by
segmenting web pages into thematic pieces and then narrating each of them
separately. Extant segmentation methods typically segment web pages using
visual and structural cues. The use of such cues without taking into account
the semantics of the content, tends to produce "impure" segments containing
extraneous material interspersed with the essential elements. In this paper, we
describe a new technique for identifying thematic segments by tightly coupling
visual, structural, and linguistic features present in the content. A notable
aspect of the technique is that it produces segments with very little
irrelevant content. Another interesting aspect is that the clutter-free main
content of a web page, that is produced by the Readability tool and the
"Reader" feature of the Safari browser, emerges as a special case of the
thematic segments created by our technique. We provide experimental evidence of
the effectiveness of our technique in reducing clutter. We also describe a user
study with 23 blind subjects of its impact on web accessibility.
[12]
Accessible skimming: faster screen reading of web pages
Interactions II
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Soviak, Andrii
/
Islam, Muhammad
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
/
Hedgpeth, Terri
Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology
2012-10-07
v.1
p.367-378
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: In our information-driven web-based society, we are all gradually falling
""victims"" to information overload [5]. However, while sighted people are
finding ways to sift through information faster, Internet users who are blind
are experiencing an even greater information overload. These people access
computers and Internet using screen-reader software, which reads the
information on a computer screen sequentially using computer-generated speech.
While sighted people can learn how to quickly glance over the headlines and
news articles online to get the gist of information, people who are blind have
to use keyboard shortcuts to listen through the content narrated by a serial
audio interface. This interface does not give them an opportunity to know what
content to skip and what to listen to. So, they either listen to all of the
content or listen to the first part of each sentence or paragraph before they
skip to the next one. In this paper, we propose an automated approach to
facilitate non-visual skimming of web pages. We describe the underlying
algorithm, outline a non-visual skimming interface, and report on the results
of automated experiments, as well as on our user study with 23 screen-reader
users. The results of the experiments suggest that we have been moderately
successful in designing a viable algorithm for automatic summarization that
could be used for non-visual skimming. In our user studies, we confirmed that
people who are blind could read and search through online articles faster and
were able to understand and remember most of what they have read with our
skimming system. Finally, all 23 participants expressed genuine interest in
using non-visual skimming in the future.
[13]
Universal and ubiquitous web access with Capti
Microsoft accessibility challenge
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Sovyak, Andrii
/
Dimitriyadi, Alexander
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Dausch, Glenn
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2012 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2012-04-16
p.27
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: In this paper we present Capti -- a universally and ubiquitously accessible
web browsing application enabling intuitive and usable web access for people
with and w/o vision impairments. Capti provides a usable screen-reader
interface for web browsing and an accessible listen-to-it-later Playlist
(charmtechlabs.com).
[14]
Why read if you can skim: towards enabling faster screen reading
Innovative accessibility techniques and studies
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2012 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2012-04-16
p.39
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: Skimming broadly refers to different speed-reading methods that aim to
enhance the rate of reading without unduly compromising on comprehension and
retention of information. Skimming of content could be particularly useful for
people with vision impairments, who frequently experience information overload
when listening to reams of digital content online. Support for usable and
useful skimming in modern screen readers remains very poor. This paper explores
the user requirements for a usable non-visual skimming interface, informed by a
large-scale human-subject experiment with blind individuals. Specifically, the
study has: (1) helped identify the type of skimming that can be useful in
screen reading main content in web pages; (2) led to the development of a
usable interface for accessible online skimming; (3) demonstrated the utility
of the accessible skimming interface in two realistic use scenarios; (4)
identified automatic summarization techniques that could "closely" approximate
skimming methods used by sighted people.
[15]
An intuitive accessible web automation user interface
Innovative accessibility techniques and studies
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2012 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2012-04-16
p.41
© Copyright 2012 ACM
Summary: In recent years, the Web has become an ever more sophisticated and
irreplaceable tool in our daily lives. While the visual Web has advanced at a
rapid pace, assistive technology has not been able to keep up, increasingly
putting visually impaired users at a disadvantage. Web automation has the
potential to bridge the accessibility divide between the ways blind and sighted
people access the Web; specifically, it can enable blind people to accomplish
web browsing tasks that were previously slow, hard, or even impossible to
achieve. In this paper, we propose and evaluate an intuitive and accessible web
automation interface. We validate the design in a Wizard-of-Oz user study with
visually-impaired subjects and show that the proposed approach has the
potential to significantly increase accessibility and usability of web pages,
reduce interaction time, and increase user satisfaction. Our findings
demonstrate the feasibility of and emphasize the pressing need for truly
accessible web automation technologies.
[16]
The design of human-powered access technology
Assistive technology design paradigms
/
Bigham, Jeffrey P.
/
Ladner, Richard E.
/
Borodin, Yevgen
Thirteenth Annual ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Assistive Technologies
2011-10-24
p.3-10
© Copyright 2011 ACM
Summary: People with disabilities have always overcome accessibility problems by
enlisting people in their community to help. The Internet has broadened the
available community and made it easier to get on-demand assistance remotely. In
particular, the past few years have seen the development of technology in both
research and industry that uses human power to overcome technical problems too
difficult to solve automatically. In this paper, we frame recent developments
in human computation in the historical context of accessibility, and outline a
framework for discussing new advances in human-powered access technology.
Specifically, we present a set of 13 design principles for human-powered access
technology motivated both by historical context and current technological
developments. We then demonstrate the utility of these principles by using them
to compare several existing human-powered access technologies. The power of
identifying the 13 principles is that they will inspire new ways of thinking
about human-powered access technologies.
[17]
Tightly coupling visual and linguistic features for enriching audio-based
web browsing experience
Poster session: information retrieval
/
Islam, Muhammad Asiful
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2011 ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge
Management
2011-10-24
p.2085-2088
© Copyright 2011 ACM
Summary: People who are blind use screen readers for browsing web pages. Since screen
readers read out content serially, a naive readout tends to mix irrelevant and
relevant content thereby disrupting the coherency of the material being read
out and confusing the listener. To address this problem we can partition web
pages into coherent segments and narrate each such piece separately. Extant
methods to do segmentation use visual and structural cues without taking the
semantics into account and consequently create segments containing irrelevant
material. In this paper, we describe a new technique for creating coherent
segments by tightly coupling visual, structural, and linguistic features
present in the content. A notable aspect of the technique is that it produces
segments with little irrelevant content. Preliminary experiments indicate that
the technique is effective in creating highly coherent segments and the
experiences of an early adopter who is blind suggest that it enriches the
overall browsing experience.
[18]
Assistive web browsing with touch interfaces
Posters and Demonstrations
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Islam, Muhammad Asiful
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Twelfth Annual ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Assistive Technologies
2010-10-25
p.235-236
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: This demonstration will propose a touch-based directional navigation
technique, on touch interface (e.g., iPhone, Macbook) for people with visual
disabilities especially blind individuals. Such interfaces coupled with TTS
(text-to-speech) systems open up intriguing possibilities for browsing and
skimming web content with ease and speed. Apple's seminal VoiceOver system for
iOS is an exemplar of bringing touch-based web navigation to blind people.
There are two major shortcomings: "fat finger" and "finger-fatigue" problems,
which have been addressed in this paper with two proposed approaches. A
preliminary user evaluation of the system incorporating these ideas suggests
that they can be effective in practice.
[19]
Mixture model based label association techniques for web accessibility
AI and toolkits
/
Islam, Muhammad Asiful
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and
Technology
2010-10-03
p.67-76
Keywords: aural web browser, blind user, context, mixture models, screen reader, web
accessibility, web forms
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: An important aspect of making the Web accessible to blind users is ensuring
that all important web page elements such as links, clickable buttons, and form
fields have explicitly assigned labels. Properly labeled content is then
correctly read out by screen readers, a dominant assistive technology used by
blind users. In particular, improperly labeled form fields can critically
impede online transactions such as shopping, paying bills, etc. with screen
readers. Very often labels are not associated with form fields or are missing
altogether, making form filling a challenge for blind users. Algorithms for
associating a form element with one of several candidate labels in its vicinity
must cope with the variability of the element's features including label's
location relative to the element, distance to the element, etc. Probabilistic
models provide a natural machinery to reason with such uncertainties. In this
paper we present a Finite Mixture Model (FMM) formulation of the label
association problem. The variability of feature values are captured in the FMM
by a mixture of random variables that are drawn from parameterized
distributions. Then, the most likely label to be paired with a form element is
computed by maximizing the log-likelihood of the feature data using the
Expectation-Maximization algorithm. We also adapt the FMM approach for two
related problems: assigning labels (from an external Knowledge Base) to form
elements that have no candidate labels in their vicinity and for quickly
identifying clickable elements such as add-to-cart, checkout, etc., used in
online transactions even when these elements do not have textual captions
(e.g., image buttons w/o alternative text). We provide a quantitative
evaluation of our techniques, as well as a user study with two blind subjects
who used an aural web browser implementing our approach.
[20]
Hearsay: a new generation context-driven multi-modal assistive web browser
WWW 2010 demos
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ahmed, Faisal
/
Islam, Muhammad Asiful
/
Puzis, Yury
/
Melnyk, Valentyn
/
Feng, Song
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
/
Dausch, Glenn
Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on the World Wide Web
2010-04-26
v.1
p.1233-1236
Keywords: assistive browser, audio interface, blind users, multi-modal, screen reader,
web accessibility
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: This demo will present HearSay, a multi-modal non-visual web browser, which
aims to bridge the growing Web Accessibility divide between individuals with
visual impairments and their sighted counterparts, and to facilitate full
participation of blind individuals in the growing Web-based society.
[21]
More than meets the eye: a survey of screen-reader browsing strategies
Browsing technologies
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Bigham, Jeffrey P.
/
Dausch, Glenn
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2010-04-26
p.13
Keywords: accessibility, blind, browsing strategy, screen reader, usability
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: Browsing the Web with screen readers can be difficult and frustrating. Web
pages often contain inaccessible content that is expressed only visually or
that can be accessed only with the mouse. Screen-reader users must also contend
with usability challenges encountered when the reading content is designed with
built-in assumptions of how it will be accessed -- generally by a sighted
person on a standard display. Far from passive consumers of content who simply
accept web content as accessible or not, many screen-reader users are adept at
developing, discovering, and employing browsing strategies that help them
overcome the accessibility and usability problems they encounter. In this
paper, we overview the browsing strategies that we have observed screen-reader
users employ when faced with challenges, ranging from unfamiliar web sites and
complex web pages to dynamic and automatically-refreshing content. A better
understanding of existing browsing strategies can inform the design of
accessible websites, development of new tools that make experienced users more
effective, and help overcome the initial learning curve for users who have not
yet acquired effective browsing strategies.
[22]
Remote web browsing via the phone with teleweb
Student research competition
/
Borodin, Yevgen
Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2010-04-10
v.2
p.4339-4344
Keywords: audio interface, blind users, hearsay, macro player, macro recorder,
non-visual, screen reader, teleweb, web browser
© Copyright 2010 ACM
Summary: TeleWeb is an assistive voice-enabled application empowering users to
remotely access the Web through the most ubiquitous device -- the phone. The
uniqueness of the technology is that it enables users to gain access to
information from almost anywhere via a plain, old-fashioned telephone. TeleWeb
users will be able to call their own personal numbers, authenticate themselves,
and then use speech and phone key-pad to remotely browse the Web on their own
PCs. TeleWeb may especially appeal to people with vision loss, as well as older
adults who may find the phone interface to be more familiar and easier to use.
In this paper, I describe the TeleWeb approach and the interface.
[23]
EDITED BOOK
No Code Required: Giving Users Tools to Transform the Web
/
Cypher, Allen
/
Dontcheva, Mira
/
Lau, Tessa
/
Nichols, Jeffrey
2010
p.512
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Introduction
End User Programming on the Web
+ Cypher, Allen
Why We Customize the Web
+ Miller, Robert
I. End User Programming Languages for the Web
Sloppy Programming
+ Little, Greg
Mixing the reactive with the personal: Opportunities for end user programming in Personal information management (system)
+ Van Kleek, Max
Going beyond PBD: A Play-by-Play and Mixed-initiative Approach (system)
+ Jung, Hyuckchul
Rewriting the Web with Chickenfoot (system)
+ Miller, Robert
A Goal-Oriented Web Browser (system)
+ Faaborg, Alexander
II. Systems and Applications
Clip, Connect, Clone: Combining Application Elements to Build Custom Interfaces for Information Access (system)
+ Fujima, Jun
Mash Maker (system)
+ Ennals, Robert
Collaborative scripting on the web (system)
+ Lau, Tessa
Programming by a Sample: Rapidly Creating Web Applications with d.mix (system)
+ Hartmann, Björn
Highlight: End User Mobilization of Existing Web Sites (system)
+ Nichols, Jeffrey
Subjunctive Interfaces for the Web
+ Lunzer, Aran
From Web Summaries to Search Templates: Automation for Personal Web Content (system)
+ Dontcheva, Mira
Access to the Temporal Web Through Zoetrope (system)
+ Adar, Eytan
Enabling End Users to Independently Build Accessibility into the Web
+ Bigham, Jeffrey
Social Accessibility: A Collaborative Approach For Improving Web Accessibility (system)
+ Borodin, Yevgen
III. Data Management and Interoperability
A World Wider than the Web: End User Programming Across Multiple Domains (system)
+ Haines, Will
Knowing What You're Talking About: Natural Language Programming of a Multi-Player Online Game (system)
+ Lieberman, Henry
IV. User Studies
Mashups for Web-Active End Users
+ Zang, Nan
Mashed layers and muddled models: debugging mashup applications
+ Jones, M. Cameron
Reuse in the world of end-user programmers
+ Scaffidi, Christopher
Using Web Search to Write Programs
+ Brandt, Joel
[24]
TeleWeb: accessible service for web browsing via phone
Web accessibility challenge
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Dausch, Glenn
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web
Accessibility (W4A)
2009-04-20
p.96-97
Keywords: HearSay, TeleWeb, blind users, older adults, phone browser, screen reader,
telephony service, web browser
© Copyright 2009 ACM
Summary: In this paper, we present TeleWeb -- a telephony service for web browsing
via the most ubiquitous communication device, the Phone. TeleWeb integrates a
simple and usable phone interface with the intelligent features such as
context-directed browsing, template-detection, and macro-replaying. We expect
that TeleWeb will equally appeal to people with vision impairments, older
adults who may not be comfortable using computers, and anyone who wants to
access the Web on the move.
[25]
Automated construction of web accessibility models from transaction
click-streams
Web engineering/session: end user web engineering
/
Mahmud, Jalal
/
Borodin, Yevgen
/
Ramakrishnan, I. V.
/
Ramakrishnan, C. R.
Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on the World Wide Web
2009-04-20
p.871-880
Keywords: context, machine learning, process models, web transaction
© Copyright 2009 International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2)
Summary: Screen readers, the dominant assistive technology used by visually impaired
people to access the Web, function by speaking out the content of the screen
serially. Using screen readers for conducting online transactions can cause
considerable information overload, because transactions, such as shopping and
paying bills, typically involve a number of steps spanning several web pages.
One can combat this overload by using a transaction model for web accessibility
that presents only fragments of web pages that are needed for doing
transactions. We can realize such a model by coupling a process automaton,
encoding states of a transaction, with concept classifiers that identify page
fragments "relevant" to a particular state of the transaction. In this paper we
present a fully automated process that synergistically combines several
techniques for transforming unlabeled click-stream data generated by
transactions into a transactionmodel. These techniques include web content
analysis to partition a web page into segments consisting of semantically
related content, contextual analysis of data surrounding clickable objects in a
page, and machine learning methods, such as clustering of page segments based
on contextual analysis, statistical classification, and automata learning. The
use of unlabeled click streams in building transaction models has important
benefits: (i) visually impaired users do not have to depend on sighted users
for creating manually labeled training data to construct the models; (ii) it is
possible to mine personalized models from unlabeled transaction click-streams
associated with sites that visually impaired users visit regularly; (iii) since
unlabeled data is relatively easy to obtain, it is feasible to scale up the
construction of domain-specific transaction models (e.g., separate models for
shopping, airline reservations, bill payments, etc.); (iv) adjusting the
performance of deployed models over timtime with new training data is also
doable. We provide preliminary experimental evidence of the practical
effectiveness of both domain-specific, as well as personalized accessibility
transaction models built using our approach. Finally, this approach is
applicable for building transaction models for mobile devices with limited-size
displays, as well as for creating wrappers for information extraction from web
sites.
